Make it easier, not complicated! *update*

My favorite application just got it’s reputation dented. At least version 5(.5). I was doing some research on “Interactivity for PDF” for an upcoming nIDug Magazine article when I stumbled upon a very annoying bug/item/fail. I did a quick document in InDesign CS4 to hide a picture on a page and only show it by using a mouseover on a button. Just your basic show/hide button action right? Export to PDF, include interactivity, ready..

Much to my surprise a few things happened when I tried to recreate the exact same stuff in InDesign CS5(.5). First “weird” stuff, missing options in the “Buttons panel”

Look at this menu in InDesign CS4 (Ctrl-Click or Right-Click to get contextual menu).

As you can see I use the Dutch localized version, in English version you’ll see “Show in PDF, Show in PDF not printable, Hide in PDF..etc

Look what “they” have done in InDesign CS5:

Ah, it says PDF-options, well let’s take a look at those shall we? I suspect they are the same as in InDesign CS4 right?

Wrong! Just a description field with the option of printable button?!!?

Ok, they did just one extra little thing in CS5. Take a better look at the bottom of the panel. It has an option: “Hide until activated” Oooh tiny little checkbox! Ok let’s use that. Export to PDF, include interactivity and ready…

Yes! Ready! But wait… it doesn’t work?!? Now there’s the catch. Adobe split the PDF export since CS 5. You HAVE to use export to interactive. So cmnd-E on Mac or Ctrl-E on PC and choose file format(?) (I don’t know what the English version is using so please correct me on this one) “interactive”.

Now it will give you another dialog box to include all of your interactivity working, instead of just the appearance of it!

Needless to say, I’m not very pleased with this workaround/difference between CS4 and new CS5 and 5.5 “feature”. Why? Because I alway work with presets and stuff to export to PDF. I never just hit cmnd-E. So for me it’s a downgrade feature, just like the missing references on the masterpages since CS3 (What? Yeah I know I’ll explain in another blogpost 😉 )